 Hey everyone I'm here with my friend Eric and we met two years ago in Florida and I was blown away by his knowledge of the plants he's been foraging for about a decade and he is a plant wizard with really seemingly infinite knowledge I know there's things he doesn't know but it seems like he knows pretty much every plant that we cross and so I've been blessed to get to learn from him I've been with him for the last day in Maryland and learned so much and so I'm excited he is going to share some of his favorite plants to help you get foraging and first he's gonna introduce himself a bit. My name is Eric I'm a plant lover permaculturist and an avid forager and I'm just really grateful to be here with y'all today and share my top 10 wild edible greens for the Mid Atlantic and there's just such an abundance of food in these fields and forests so let's go see what we can find. My number one all-time favorite wild edible green has to be erdica dioica or the mighty stinging nettle there is a native North American species as well erdica gracilis and also La Portia canadensis I love it for so many reasons it offers all kinds of amazing medicine its flavor is incredible it can be absolutely prolific in the wild and it's very easy to cultivate for those of us who are gardeners not to mention it'll grow in full shade underneath of black walnuts for the permaculturists out there it can be made into dried green powders or blended up into pestos or it can also be steamed and sauteed any kind of heat will deactivate the stinging hairs and make it edible but yeah definitely my number one all-time favorite has to be stinging nettle so number two on my list of wild edible greens has got to be chickweed this is another great friend to really connect with and bring into the kitchen so this is Stellaria media common name is chickweed and I love this one because it's pretty easy to identify it has these really cute little star-shaped flowers on it and opposite leaves it's really cool and juicy and the flavor is really awesome it's one that I do like to cook because it's a little bit higher in the oxalic acid department but it also makes a great pesto and can be dried into powders so yeah I would definitely say number two on the list is chickweed and keep an eye out for this one in the spring and fall it'll disappear in the summer so number three on my list is lambs quarters this is one of the first friends that I really got tuned into when I was first starting to eat something wild every day the Latin name is Kenna podium album and it's just an absolute superstar from the spinach family it's one of the most nutritious plants on earth it's also one of the highest wild greens in oxalic acid so this is one that I definitely like to cook it up I like to steam it boil it pan fry it anything to help cook out and denature those oxalates but after that it's an absolutely flavor packed incredible edible this is one that should be in all the four-star restaurants and it should definitely be on everyone's plate so Kenna podium album lambs quarters number three number four on my list is definitely dandelion toraxacum aficionale this is one that most everybody's probably already familiar with it is an absolute incredible edible the leaves are great in salad but they can also be boiled to remove some of the bitterness if you're not into that they are loaded with all kinds of nutrients tons of vitamin a and they're the second highest source of boron of any of the wild greens which is cool because boron helps to detoxify the body of fluoride so it's definitely an important one for us to bring into our diets and it's also a great one for helping to support the liver health and helping our body to detoxify in multiple different ways so dandelion is definitely one for everybody to tune into and bring home to the dinner plate coming in at number five is alley area pediolata the garlic mustard so this is a biennial plant in the brassicae family the mustard family like the first four on our list it's and it's a European import that is very weedy and prolific and this one in fact is allelopathic so it competes against other plants in the area and for that reason I really love encouraging people to consume these kinds of plants that are exotic to our region so that we can help native habitats to thrive a little bit more take some of the pressure off of the native plants in that way this one was brought over from Europe because it's very highly nutritious 190 milligrams of vitamin C per 100 grams serving just very easy to consume in a batch of pesto and that's definitely one of my favorite ways to bring garlic mustard into the kitchen is in pesto form it also makes a great cooked green sauteed or even steamed up or you can boil it when it gets older to take some of the bitterness out so yeah definitely number five on the list is alley area pediolata garlic mustard so number six on our list is basswood this is the American basswood Talia Americana and this is a native tree in the Malo family and I love this one because we don't get to eat a whole lot of tree leaves and this one is so mild and has such a nice flavor that it can actually be the basis for a salad and I love greens that we can eat raw it also makes an excellent green powder makes it fantastic sauteed greens steamed any way that you prepare it basswood is absolutely incredible and the leaves also have this nice kind of mucilaginous quality to it that I think really helps to keep us hydrated in the summertime and also makes for a wonderful tea when we've got a sore throat so yeah definitely number six on the on the list is basswood Talia Americana so for number seven on our list we have another tree leaf and this is one that I bet a lot of you are already familiar with because it is world famous for its berries and of course we're talking about the mighty mulberries so in the mid Atlantic we'd be that would be either Morris Alba which is the Asian species or Morris rubro which is the native one they both have edible leaves there is an introduced species Browsonedia papyrifera that is a look-alike that's worth looking into it's called the paper mulberry it's in the same family but not as edible and this one it's not as some of them are acceptable as a salad crop but more so I think of mulberries as being great for green powders or cooked greens either steamed sauteed or otherwise kind of cooked down a little bit and yeah I love mulberries because they're so easy to identify and they're so prolific and they have these deep roots and they're just beautiful amazing awesome trees so number seven is the mighty mulberry Morris Alba Morris rubra coming in at number eight on our list is purslane porchillaca oleracea and this is a really great cooking green it can also be added raw the salads the flavor is great it is kind of high in oxalic acid so I do prefer to cook it myself personally but I have heard of people adding it to smoothies it's got a little bit of a sliminess to it that adds a great mucilaginous kind of throat coating quality to it and one of the other things that's amazing about this plant is it's remarkably high omega three fat content so this is a great source of omega three fats from a local wild you know plant-based source so yeah definitely let's say number eight is porchillaca oleracea purslane so number nine on our list is asclepia siriaca this is a native perennial that grows in open fields all throughout the country this one is absolutely incredibly delicious it's important to boil this one twice because it does have cardiac glycosides known as cardinolides in it that are pretty toxic so I like to boil it in two changes of water another thing to be aware of with this plant is that it looks very similar to another native that is poisonous and that's dogbane so this is the dogbane right here and you can see that they obviously grow in the exact same habitat and so superficially it can be difficult to tell the two apart but when you get into the core of it you can see the inside of the milkweed is hollow where the inside of the dogbane is solid and so that's a very key distinguishing feature that makes it easy to tell the two apart Sclepia siriaca number nine coming in at number 10 on our list is the mighty Bidens beggars ticks Spanish needles and with this one we'll go ahead and say the entire genus as far as I know every species is edible some are definitely better than others I've noticed this one in particular is Biden's frondosa and this one is a great weedy summer superstar it's in the Aster family and has a little bit of kind of bitter sappiness to it so I do prefer to either boil or steam it before using it for pesto but an absolutely incredible cooking green loaded with nutrition and also has a medicinal component to it as well being very popular as a gentle but effective antibiotic so yeah and the common names beggars ticks and Spanish needles are a reference to the seed and so that makes these very easy to identify and you'll see them all over the place once you start looking for them number 10 Bidens so thanks so much for taking the time to get to know my top 10 wild edibles for the mid-Atlantic and wanted to give a special shout out to definitely Rob Greenfield and your team thank you so much definitely want to give a lot of love to the folks at Meta creative for helping me with all this filming and putting together all the shots and scenes and just making this whole process so much more approachable for me thank you for your help and patience and definitely wanted to give thanks to the Reed Center in Middletown Maryland Chesapeake's bounty and St. Leonard Maryland and plant path nursery in Knoxville Maryland or hosting some of these video segments and yeah so thanks so much peace I hope that you got a lot out of this video and can now implement these things into your life Eric is a plant educator an earth lover and a permaculturist with so much knowledge to share with us check the links in this description to follow him and make sure to subscribe to this channel where there are many more inspirational and educational videos to come I love you all very much and see you again real soon